30 Birds Review
An experience where Persian inspired art, crazy trains of music and an okay narrative meet a collectathon of 30 birds in some great cozy indie hours!
Holiday season can be very stressful and I’m not an exception to that feeling. With work and everything in between making me feel a bit overwhelmed, I was getting into a gaming slump. Not a singular title could hook me for more than 4 hours until I moved on to the next trial to find my next gaming experience that I was going to take all the way to the finish line. That’s when the Indie Game Awards by Six One Indie came around and I met this weird looking game called 30 Birds by RamRam Studios and Business Goose - published by ARTE France - came around. I took the leap and I’m glad I did.
This game translated into a narrative experience of around 6.5h of gameplay that made me just forget all my worries around the season. Exactly what I needed.
This is the type of game where the narrative is enriched by the background noise, the scenery and overall world building. That is really well explained and inserted in the first moments of contact with the world. While on a train, you get all the info you truly need to understand what going on and get all the momentum needed to dive into this beautiful world of lanterns.
Arriving in Central lantern, the first thing that impacts you is the music and some slight points of narrative. Music and Art Direction set this world apart from other experiences in the Indie scene - well, it didn’t win the IGA for Best Art Design for nothing. I’m not an expert in music. I dabble into the world of music and I know what I like, but one of the features listed on the steam page was “Wander through the gorgeous neighborhoods of Lantern City while enjoying a ska - dub - reggae inspired soundtrack” and if there’s something I know is that ska sounds super funky and weird. Together with an amazing, but also weird art - with Persian inspiration - you can count on this mix of weird eye and ear candy throughout the full game. I know I had a blast with these two aspects. There’s even eggplants roaming around the world…What even is this game at this point?!
While the world hook was really good in the beginning instance of the game, I don’t think the plot has enough hooks and is that interesting. It has the initial hook when Simurgh gets kidnapped, but after that initial plot hook, I think the game relies too much on the non-narrative assets to capture the essence of the game. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it surely wasn’t for me. I’m just saying if you expect a strong narrative with impactful plot to keep you entertained, this might not be the best fit for you. In my case I was looking for a good adventure, with decent enough of a storyline and good fun puzzle and gameplay. The basic narrative plot translates into a collectathon
after Simurgh abduction where I found myself having to save 30 birds to conjure a ritual to summon the bird goddess. That’s the essence of the gameplay loop with some puzzles in between. Not the most entertaining gameplay, but also since I was looking for a bite size light and cozy experience, this fit the style I was looking for surprisingly good. The narrative interactions between characters have the greatest humor which kept me entertained while searching for all these weird and funny birds.
The puzzles were fun to complete, but I felt very little friction. I feel like what is missing in these puzzles were actually some kind of accessibility review. Some of the puzzles deserved more prompts on screen for players to understand what was going on or maybe some hints. They’re not complicated puzzles whatsoever, but they’re also not very straightforward…Especially the music creation puzzles, I feel like I completed all of those without even understanding what was going on. Which on one side can be very on brand with composers creating masterpieces, but on the other side it can be very weird feeling like you completed a puzzle part without understanding the solution besides the mechanic. Overall the game lacks some accessibility options.
30 Birds is a good experience, while maybe not the most engaging on some of the aspects I mentioned before, I think if you’re looking for a bite size experience to complete in a bunch of hours while sipping on a warm beverage, this might just be the game you need. I also bought the game with a 40% discount and in my opinion around 10$ is the perfect price for this experience, as at the price point of 20$ you can get better bang for your buck in my opinion. I played the game on Steam, but it’s also available for Xbox and Nintendo Switch
